International Journal of Chinese Education

This special issue collects six interesting case studies on the so-called 15-year free education in four Chinese societies including Hong Kong, Macau, Mainland China, and Taiwan. The selected works analyze the target education policies based on the theoretical framework of 3A2S—affordability, accessibility, accountability, sustainability, and social justice. Together, they provide a multifaceted account of the merits and limitations of the 15-year free education policies implemented in Greater China. The authors examine the education policies in their respective socioeconomic contexts and aim to suggest new research agenda for early childhood education in these Greater Chinese societies.

With the introduction of 15-year free education in Macau and several provinces in Mainland China in recent years, a heated debate has broken out in Hong Kong over the proposal of providing free pre-primary education in addition to the existing 12-year free education at primary and secondary levels. A sea of different views has been voiced via various media since 2010 and the debate persists. In an attempt to help reconcile the ceaseless debate, this study was executed to delineate the major reasons, arguments, and concerns put forth by different parties in the debate. To this end, a set of online content analyses was conducted. The findings suggested that members of the community tended to support the implementation of 15-year free education, but several fundamental issues have been neglected by the supporting party and addressing these issues would be imperative. In light of the present findings, this study has identified the common interests shared by the supporters and opponents of the proposal which could offer a new light to understanding this debate. It is hoped that the findings and discussion could provide insights into how the issues concerned could be resolved, and in the long run, contribute to the development of pre-primary education in Hong Kong.

The education authority of Ningshan County in China’s Shaanxi Province launched the 3-year free early childhood education (ece) policy in 2011, which includes waiving the tuition fees, enhancing children’s nutrition, and improving the facilities and administration of kindergartens. Such efforts have successfully increased the enrollment rate of ece which grew from 53.75% in 2009 to 92.4% in 2013. In this study, a field investigation of the implementation of the free ece policy in Ningshan County was carried out, and its impacts and implications for authorities to revise the policy were discussed. The authors urge local governments to take into account the local economic and social contexts in the formulation of free ece policies so that the policies in rural China could be feasible and sustainable.

The objective of this research is to understand the preconditions and difficulties for implementing free early childhood education in rural China. A case study of City D was conducted in Shandong province. City D announced the 3-year free kindergarten education policy in 2009, but only District H had successfully launched it in public kindergartens in the rural areas by 2012. Although the policy was welcomed by families in rural area, the implementation was difficult to both the district governments and the local kindergartens. The major difficulties encountered in the process of implementing this policy included the lack of funding support, the absence of supporting policy and assurance measures, and the discrimination against migrant children from rural areas. To solve the problems, this study suggests a multiple-stage method for developing a practical and continuous model and the funding responsibility moving from district and county government to those of the upper levels.

Former Portuguese colony and now a Special Administrative Region of China, Macau had progressed from following its colonizer and its neighbouring cities, like Hong Kong and Taiwan, to establishing its own education system and being the first in the Greater China region to deliver 15-year free education. The objective of this study was to examine the perceived impacts of this policy on the affordability, accessibility, accountability of early childhood education in Macau. A multiple case study, using quantitative (surveys) and qualitative (interviews) measures, was conducted in four private kindergartens in Macau to understand how the 4 principals, 24 teachers and 119 parents viewed the policy impacts. The results indicated that: (1) across roles, parents were the most supportive of the policy and consistently gave the highest grading amongst the three stakeholders. Principals were the most knowledgeable of the policy, but graded the policy lowest and regarded the government’s financial subsidy as the most insufficient. Teachers were the least optimistic and positive about the impacts of the policy. They felt that teacher qualification and the quality of teaching resources should be further enhanced; (2) Across school types, kindergartens which joined the free education network graded the policy higher and perceived its impacts more positively than the one which did not join; (3) Extra subsidies were suggested by the respondents to cover children’s extra-curricular activities, support from childcare and special education professionals, and school-based curriculum development.

Many counties in Western China have launched 15-year ‘free’ education policies since 2010 to provide the 3-year free early childhood education (ece). To understand the affordability, accessibility, accountability, and sustainability of these policies, we sampled the four counties in Shanxi and Shaanxi province that were the first cohort to implement free ece policies: Yulin, Ningshan, Zuoyun, and Changzhi. A multiple-case online research was conducted and the results indicated that: (1) the ‘free’ education policies are neither ‘all kids free’ nor ‘all fees free’, thus could only partially solve the problem of affordability; (2) the policies did not solve the problems related to school place allocation, which in turn, tended to exacerbate the issue of accessibility and inequality in educational opportunities; (3) no monitoring and quality assurance mechanisms were launched to improve the accountability of kindergartens; and (4) the policies are unlikely to be sustainable as the ece budget entirely relies on the fiscal investment at the county level. Implications of these findings were discussed and some suggestions were made.

The policy of ‘free’ education for young children has come to be a concern in some parts of the Asia-Pacific region in the recent decades. When the early childhood education (ece) policies of Hong Kong, Macau, Shenzhen and some of the provinces on the Mainland China were being studied, the policies in Taiwan have also received some attention. In this paper, the ece policies of Taiwan have been reviewed with the 3A2S framework which refers to accessibility, affordability, accountability, sustainability, and social justice. In doing so, the most up-to-date data from the national and educational statistics of Taiwan were used for the analysis. This policy review does allow us to see how Taiwan has dealt with ece. While there are indications that some of the elements of the framework have had positive effect, others require additional research and reform in the future.